FORMER IRISH CRIMES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19803, 31 May 1926, Page 8

FORMER IRISH CRIMES

SEVENTY ALLEGED MURDERS. ACTION AGAINST PUBLISHERS. LONDON, May 18. Joseph MacGrath, a former member of the Irish Free State Cabinet, to-day appealed againkt Mt Justice Fraser’s decision refusing to strike out the defendants’ particulars of justification in connection with MacGrath’s libel action against A. and C. Black, publishers, and C. H. Bretherton, the author of the book “The Real Ireland,” relating to posttreaty conditions. It is alleged in the book that MacGrath. as the head of the Free State Secret Service, was guilty of complicity in murders, and also responsible for the murder of a man who, previously, had ambushed and bombed a motor, killing three Free State officers. The book added that MacGrath also knew the men who were implicated in the attack on British troops at Quenestown. Counsel said that the defendants had not justified the first portion of the alleged libel, but that they had justified the statement that MacGrath took no steps to bring the guilty to trial, and therefore was unfit to associate with respectable men. Mr Justice Scrutton, in dismissing the appeal, said that the defendants had supplied particulars of 70 murders in which complicity was alleged, and yet Macgrath was not satisfied.